This thread could go on forever with all the stories from the boom. I remember my wife coming home from the late shift and mentioning there was a couple of hooligans parked in the driveway shinning lights at the barn. Run them off, then went in and shot 150 dollars of coon.
Set a bridge wall set and return in a couple days only to find the earth shifted and your trap sits 3 inches out!
Coon hunters cradling hammocks stuffed with straw in trees to promote denning.
Spending vehicle ditch time because we chose to avoid pullovers.

I would still take that compared to what we have now.

Give it a year or two, lol.

I love reading these stories, so keep them coming. I hear all about setting by bridge walls but have yet to try it, someday I will though.

I don't have any time for girls, I have to run a trapline. Unless they want to help run it but that would be rare nowadays.

Actually it's much less rare! When I was your age, I was the only girl I knew in the world that trapped. When I found trapperman 18 years ago, I was one of just 4-5 women that trapped. Now there's a group on facebook with hundreds of women trappers. It's becoming more and more popular every year for women to hunt and trap, so don't lose faith, lol.

I had a friend in high school with a 1978 Ford half ton factory high boy with the 300 straight six. He sold it in 97 (the year I graduated) for $6000. My dad was flabbergasted. He said he bought an identical truck brand new in 78 and paid a couple hundred less for it.

With coyote and coon at roughly zero dollars, and gas at 4 bucks, im pretty sure you can make time for both.

Nobody has mentioned 44 cent a gallon gasoline.

This will really put things in perspective. I remember in '76/'77 rats were averaging about $5.50 (this was a couple of years before they really spiked), and gas was 44 cents.
That means you could buy about 12 gallons of gas with one muskrat.

So in order to be equivalent to todays gas price, you would now need to average about $60 per muskrat; kind of depressing.

One dollar gas,..one good coon bought two and a half days running time. Those tough old buggers slept in the backseat. Sustenance consisted of simple meat sandwiches.
On a good rat lake, you chipped out dollars to stake throwers,..dnr caught on to that eventually..
Winter came ,out come the optics and sewing needles.

I paid for my final two years of college in 1981 with the fur check I received from selling my red fox and mink at the MTA auctions.

I had a roll of bank and I still remember going to the registrar's office as a junior and plopping a wad of cash ($11,000) on the counter and saying pay me up for this year AND next. Cash was king. No such thing as a student loan and yearly tuition for grad school was $5500/year.

Ah, the "good old days."

Blessings,
Mark

Bunch of old guys on here.

Where I grew up 80% of the roads were red shale, and one guy would run the roads with the dog in front and hunt coon all night. He took the wife and 4 kids piled in the car and at daylight ran the coon he got to the fur buyer. I was friends with the fur buyer, and he would show up when he was having his morning coffee. The guy never skinned/fleshed a coon.

One of the bigger trappers at that time showed up first thing in the morning after opening day and dumped 120 rats on the floor. Him and his boy had got the bid on some state ground. After they set traps that day...they turned back around and checked through the night. Him telling of sleeping on a muskrat hut for a couple hrs was like fire in my soul

I trapped in the late 70's and it is difficult to put it in perspective with the difference in the value of a dollar then and today. Beaver at $1.00 an inch made the hard work worth it even though the trap thieves and crooks were out in force. Season for beaver then was mid winter here which meant trapping through the ice which made for some long exhausting days. Mink at $35.00 and 'rats at $8.00 helped pay for a lot of toys as I was still living at home as a teenager!

Chris

My senior year I was determined to trap hard opening week of trapping and talked to the principal about it. He wasn't sure and asked that I stop by again Friday after school and he would have an answer for me then. I got all my school work done and that Friday dropped by his office as requested. His answer was no as he said that if he let me take the time off then he would have allow others to do the same. Didn't make science to me but his word was final. Shockingly Monday morning found me going to school smelling like skunk and was asked to leave. Happy to ablige off I went to run my life. Friday the school called and asked I I had planned on ever coming back. Understandably my parents where quite upset with me,, that is until I showed them my fur check for $2500. That was more than what my parents made in a month. Nothing more was said about missing school afterwards.

Money was great, trap theft was horrible around home. New who it was but couldn't prove it. Fur was plentiful, buyers were competing. Couple favorite memories.
Neighbor was an old trapper and would skin his rats for a nickle apiece. He sold me traps and taught me a lot, lucky as most wouldn't share.
My first red fox, it was a furrow set on a picked corn field, dirt hole.
Had a bird problem pecking holes in the back of my rats on one pond.
My front wheel drive Subaru with reclining bucket seats, could fit down or between the ruts left by log skidders.
Took my great morning check to my girlfriends house in the morning and she asked why I am showing her dead animals. Broke up few days later! LMAO
Ended up with a major upgrade and someone who loves the outdoors.

Gas was .80 cents a gallon. Traps, and trappers everywhere! Stolen traps and especially stolen fur constantly!

I asked our principal to take the 1st week of trapping off and he said if you got a note from your teachers, I could take off. I was an A student, so no problem. Took the 1st week off 8th grade through 12th.

I can remember guys taking a sabbatical from good paying jobs and trapping the Horicon Marsh after paying over $10,000 for the rights to do so - everyone was tight lipped about sharing information.

I started to trap in the mid 60's I checked my muskrat traps using a kerosene lantern Muskrats where worth about a dollar Skunks and possums sold for about the same In 1972 I bought my first car It was a Chevy Vega . Gas was .29 cents a gallon .Than in 1974 the oil embargo caused the price to go to about .45 cents a gallon .And at that time the Japanese motorcycles started selling real well in the US In 975 I bought a new 1975 Honda 750 for $2200.00 At about 40 miles to the gallon I was not concerned with gas rationing or that it cost .45 to .50 cents a gallon .Fur prices where slowing improving .As the 1980,s arrived Red Fox @70.00,Coon @40.00, $6.00 Rats and $4.00 possums where normal. Money could be made trapping .Those that could not catch critters .Or would not put in the work became trap//fur thieves . And permission to trap only applied to those that ask More often than not it was a free for all .And sometimes people paid with a bloody nose or a black eye. .As many mentioned there was money to be made trapping during those years .Find some old copies of the Trapper and Predator Caller magazine for the late 70's and early 80' It was like a newspaper in size with about 120 to 135 pages of everything you could find about trapping .I was just a small time hobby trapper that I would set several farms with about 50 to 60 traps .I would trap for about 5 or 6 weeks at that time .I never got a large catch but my catch was enough to get me about $600. to $1000.00 for a season .And than I would use my fur check like a savings account .Over the years I brought several guns .A nice Olympus 35 mm camera and other items I wanted to have. In Oct.1987 the bottom dropped out of the fur market .In the 70 s and 80s fur buyers where everywhere .There was money to be made by buyers also When the market crashed many of the local buyers closed and never reopened later when prices improved some what There where a few years in the 1990s that due to having no place to sell my fur to I trapped very little ,Than in the mid 90,s prices on some items showed some improvement Prices across the board where spotty but some years rats sold for $6 ,mink some years went for 20 to 25 Red Fox in the upper 20 to about 30 .So if I targeted the right critters and planned well I was still able to sell about as much fur as the earlier boom years .I have been trapping for also most 60 years .It is the thing I most like to do and it gives me the most satisfaction when I am successful And while money is certainly a part of why I trap I do not consider the money to be the primary reason .However in 2020 I averaged just over $3.00 each for Red Fox . For some big coons I received about 1.75 each . I was using an extra 50 to 75 dollars a week checking my traps . I can only afford some much fun So for me the best years where in the 1990s and 2000,s .My numbers as far as critters caught where my best years and prices where OK within reason Not matter what though I had the time of my life running a trapline all those years